Post season: Football Hall of Fame pays homage to great players, including 3 with Utah ties

CANTON, Ohio — Merlin Olsen was one of the heroes of my youth. He was the star of the show when my dad took me to my first football games at Utah State University.

I don't think I ever met Merlin, but when I was in college, I did get to know his younger twin sisters. A few years later, Logan renamed the park across the street from his house in his honor. That was the park where we used to go ice skating a lot when we were little, so we thought that was fun. And then there was his career on "Little House on the Prairie," which I watched faithfully for years.

Given all that, I always felt a kind of a connection to him even if I couldn't claim personal contact. So, when my sister and I found ourselves in northern Ohio earlier this year, on a path that would take us past Canton, we thought it would be fun to stop and look up Merlin in the Professional Football Hall of Fame.

I should stop here to admit that while I like football, it is not my passion-sport. That designation belongs to baseball. So, this visit was not the pilgrimage it might be for other fans of the game. But we quickly discovered that no matter what your liking of and involvement with football, there is plenty at the Hall of Fame to keep you intrigued and interested.

We could spot some of those people who were on pilgrimages — the ones who paused quietly for a few seconds by the statue of Jim Thorpe that graces the lobby; the ones who got down on one knee to explain to young sons about the greatness of their own early heroes; the ones who reverently placed a hand on the case holding the artifacts of long-ago games; the ones who whispered while they were in the darkened HOF gallery; the ones wearing the jerseys of their favorite players.

We also saw wives who were patiently led from exhibit to exhibit by enthusiastic husbands. We saw families talking about their favorite teams. We saw kids who would forever after be able to brag that they threw a football through the touchdown hole in one of the interactive displays.

Very quickly, we got caught up in the expression of excellence and pursuit of greatness that the hall represents.

And, yes, we found Merlin.

· · · · ·

The Professional Football Hall of Fame first opened in Canton in 1963, with its trademark football-topped circular building, a second building for other exhibits and a charter class of 17 enshrinees. It didn't take long to run out of space. A third building was added in 1971, a fourth in 1978. In 1995, a $9.2 million expansion project added a turntable theater called the GameDay Stadium, brought exhibit space up to six major galleries and added an Archives & Information Center.